Illustrated Copies
Illustrated copies of the work are among the most sumptuous examples of Persian miniature painting. Several copies remain intact, although two of the most famous, the Houghton Shahnameh and the Great Mongol Shahnameh, were broken up for sheets to be sold separately in the 20th century. A single sheet from the former was sold for £904,000 in 2006. The Baysonghori Shahnameh, an illuminated manuscript copy of the work (Golestan Palace, Iran), is included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register of cultural heritage items.
In honour of the Shahnameh's millennial anniversary, in 2010 the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge hosted a major exhibition, called "Epic of the Persian Kings: The Art of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh", which ran from September 2010 to January 2011. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC also hosted an exhibition of beautifully illustrated folios from the 14th through the 16th centuries, called "Shahnama: 1000 Years of the Persian Book of Kings", which was on view from October 2010 to April 2011, coinciding with a museum celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
Read more about this topic: Persian Quran
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